... and furthermore the dilemma is not really a tough choice, and just about everybody in the film is completely unlikable except Leslie Caron's character, Mrs. Dubedat. She is earnest in her desire to save her husband, who is ill from "consumption" (tuberculosis) at a time when there was no cure or real understanding of the disease. However, she is just so incredibly naive as to how bad a person her husband really is.
There is a doctor with a medicinal cure, and he is the doctor that Mrs. Dubedat settles upon. However, the doctor only has the ability to treat ten patients at a time, and he has only one bed left. It is either going to be Mr. Dubedat, a brilliant artist and a rotten person, or a fellow physician who is not charismatic, interesting, or imaginative, but he IS a doctor and he does take care of the poor for virtually nothing. In other words, a nice but dull guy.
Dirk Bogarde usually played war heroes or sympathetic figures, so I guess it is a tribute to his acting talents that he made most of the rogue characters George Sanders ever played look like Gandhi in comparison to Louis Dubedat. However, when Dubedat goes to talk to the doctors who might cure him, in what he knows is basically an interview process, he is just too open and frank about what a blackguard he is in front of people who can choose to save him or not without a real worry that they will choose to let him die. He borrows money from all of them individually, giving each a story that is a lie, borrows another's cigarette case and pawns it, and it turns out that the hosting doctor's maid was once married to Dubedat and that he dumped her after a few weeks after going through all of her money, and never bothered to divorce her before marrying the second Mrs. Dubedat.
Of course the great irony here is that three of the protesting doctors are in many ways as immoral as Dubedat. Like Dubedat they have respectable professions, but they really look upon their patients as objects of experimentation while profiting on their profession way beyond any accomplishments they have. I guess that might be why Dubedat laughs at them when they call him on his immorality.
Mrs. Dubedat knows that her husband is irresponsible with money and likes the ladies, but she has no idea he has made her a party to bigamy. Now the other three doctors are actually quacks, so the doctor with the medicinal cure is the only one that can truly save Mr. Dubedat. The choice to let him die might be an easy one if it were not for this doctor's own moral dilemma. He is very attracted to Mrs. Dubedat, and it is implied if she were widowed he might court her himself. Plus, if Dubedat dies, his wife need never know she was a bigamist, so he is having a hard time making a just decision when his own personal gain is at stake.
So what will be the verdict? Watch and find out. It is a bit wordy with some scenes that just go on ridiculously long and actually LOOKS like it was adapted from a play. I'd moderately recommend it.
There is a doctor with a medicinal cure, and he is the doctor that Mrs. Dubedat settles upon. However, the doctor only has the ability to treat ten patients at a time, and he has only one bed left. It is either going to be Mr. Dubedat, a brilliant artist and a rotten person, or a fellow physician who is not charismatic, interesting, or imaginative, but he IS a doctor and he does take care of the poor for virtually nothing. In other words, a nice but dull guy.
Dirk Bogarde usually played war heroes or sympathetic figures, so I guess it is a tribute to his acting talents that he made most of the rogue characters George Sanders ever played look like Gandhi in comparison to Louis Dubedat. However, when Dubedat goes to talk to the doctors who might cure him, in what he knows is basically an interview process, he is just too open and frank about what a blackguard he is in front of people who can choose to save him or not without a real worry that they will choose to let him die. He borrows money from all of them individually, giving each a story that is a lie, borrows another's cigarette case and pawns it, and it turns out that the hosting doctor's maid was once married to Dubedat and that he dumped her after a few weeks after going through all of her money, and never bothered to divorce her before marrying the second Mrs. Dubedat.
Of course the great irony here is that three of the protesting doctors are in many ways as immoral as Dubedat. Like Dubedat they have respectable professions, but they really look upon their patients as objects of experimentation while profiting on their profession way beyond any accomplishments they have. I guess that might be why Dubedat laughs at them when they call him on his immorality.
Mrs. Dubedat knows that her husband is irresponsible with money and likes the ladies, but she has no idea he has made her a party to bigamy. Now the other three doctors are actually quacks, so the doctor with the medicinal cure is the only one that can truly save Mr. Dubedat. The choice to let him die might be an easy one if it were not for this doctor's own moral dilemma. He is very attracted to Mrs. Dubedat, and it is implied if she were widowed he might court her himself. Plus, if Dubedat dies, his wife need never know she was a bigamist, so he is having a hard time making a just decision when his own personal gain is at stake.
So what will be the verdict? Watch and find out. It is a bit wordy with some scenes that just go on ridiculously long and actually LOOKS like it was adapted from a play. I'd moderately recommend it.